The Summer of '78: Ralph Lauren's Polo

When even cologne was too cool for school.

In my 2009 Fragrantica review for Polo, I wrote: 

"Polo is Yatagan without the bite. The smell of damp, freshly-cut grass in late September, complete with the earthy tinge of wood and soil. There's some old pine needles resting in there, too. I like Polo, but I'm not sure I would wear it. Other similar fragrances likes Quorum and Yatagan can be had for less, and offer just as much, if not more." 

I read that today and think, is this still true?

It used to be true, particularly with late vintage Cosmair bottles from my high school days, which were blessedly overdosed with oakmoss and could clear a room with one spray. Polo belonged to the Grey Flannel school of "mean green" masculines, harkening from an era when manliness meant smelling like you'd just finished a long hot day of doing yard work. But times change (as I spent ample time complaining about in my prior post), and so does fragrance; Polo has been reformulated into the current "stubby sprayer" Luxury Products version in square green glass. How does it measure up in 2026?

I refer to the 2006 thread on Basenotes titled, "Polo Crest vs. Polo (Green)" and scroll down to "ChuckW's" 2017 comment: 

"I got my new bottle of Crest today. Not having owned this in almost 20 years, I had forgotten how much it's like the original. It's almost like 'Polo Lite.' This is a very nice scent. I'm glad I bought it." 

This was my experience with Crest, which I consider "Polo in miniature," with a pinch of sweet herbs and a simpler base of cedar and musk. If Polo Green smells like Connecticut woodland after a rainy night in the dead heat of July, Crest is those same woods after they've thinned and dried out in early October. But I recently added the original Polo to my collection, curious to know what time and possibly neglect has done to this landmark 1978 masculine. I myself have neglected Polo, only acquiring a bottle now, after nearly 20 years of connoisseurship and having already owned and enjoyed other Carlos Benaïm creations like Eternity for Men (1989) and Polo Ultra Blue (2018), after suddenly realizing that despite my love for all things green and rugged, I've never owned it. 

The current Luxury Products version of Polo is, in essence, Polo Crest with tobacco instead of sweet herbs. Lighter, fresher, airier than the hoary Warner iteration and even more rugged Cosmair formula, with that same bright piney opening accord, attenuated to ten minutes instead of an hour, followed by the rich, earthy, woody, slightly balsamic smell of, well, Polo. Not as much flab in the midsection, which was once a dark foray into the shadowy netherworld of 1970s oakmoss mysticism; the current Polo favors Crest's open-collared late summer breeze of humid grass, woods, and tobacco leaves. If there's a summer fragrance, it's Polo, just as it's always been. 

I think the current formula (mine is a 2023 batch) is perfectly fine, quite good actually, and with the exception of the missing oakmoss, I see no call for complaints. Unfortunately with fragrances as famous as Polo, there's also a lot of crappy takes out there. People speak of it as being a "fall/winter frag" despite Polo being a summer sport, the green bottle with gold polo player alluding directly to the verdant exhilaration of summer sport, and the fragrance itself piled high with accords that directly convey the aromatic experience of galloping after a polo ball through grass and pine scrub. So . . . . winter? Really? 

Even in its current formula, Polo smells quite literally like the woods here in central Connecticut on a humid 90 degree afternoon in early July. It's as if the fragrance were conceived of after Benaïm spent a week here traipsing through the wilderness, as I used to do as a child. The smells are all there, and Polo captures them as a thunderstorm is rolling in to break the sweltering heat, with the first heavy drops smacking down through the leaves. A winter fragrance this is not, for not all summer fragrances are about "light" and "fresh" and "blue." Summer is regional, and Polo is how it smells where I live. 

But Polo is also something more. Released the year Woody Allen filmed "Manhattan," the legendary '78 Buick Regal rolled into showrooms, and Abercrombie & Kent defeated Tulsa in the U.S. Open Polo Championship, Ralph Lauren's Polo has adopted a reputation for being the quintessential wealthy, middle-aged man's cologne. It is associated with East Coast wealth, success, and erudition, much more so than anything by Chanel, or Dior, or even Creed. Something about the branding—polo player on horse, polo as a wealthy person's sport, and the scent as something truly rarefied in its uncompromising adherence to masculine archetypes—puts Polo in its own special league as a fragrance for those who understand how personal scent conveys personality. 

I smell some Aramis Devin in it, even today. A sneaky dusting of cinnamon in both fragrances was an ingenious way of lending them some woody skank without needing any complex musk molecules, and both Devin and Polo utilize that judicious cinnamon in their heart and base accords. But where Devin leans on floral jasmine to give space to its trees, Polo takes a deeper, woodier tobacco direction. Its jasmine and rose petals offer brief flashes of brightness, like pockets of oxygen that lift Benaïm’s forested olfactory chiaroscuro, without ever turning into a literal flower garden.

Polo also makes good use of basil, which is often employed by perfumers as both a supporting player and even a full-on stand-in for pine. Here it adds to and extends the brief pine needle top note, giving that semisweet green snap a presence as the deeper brown tones take over. Chamomile was once a star note in the Warner and Cosmair versions, and while it flits briefly through the opening moments of the Luxury Products formula, it's too fleeting to consider it a serious part of the fragrance. I experience it as a nuance now, and am glad that it's at least allowed to be that. 

In recent years, I've written about how the woody, earthy, musky masculines of bygone eras are no longer practical for use in today's postmodern Millennial/Gen-Z culture. Young women have been conditioned into considering sugary body mists and barely-there cucumber waters desirable on both themselves and their men, thus rendering these virile classics as little more than stodgy dinosaurs and "dad scents." Polo is no exception. However, I would caution today's youngsters by pointing out that although it is the scent of 1978, which is nearly half a century ago now, 1978 was a pretty cool year, with some pretty amazing movie culture, some groundbreaking fine art, and some brand new (at the time) hit singles like "Just What I Needed" blaring from radios everywhere. 

Think stuff from 1978 is old-fogey "dad" juice? Listen honey, every girl could use a daddy. Polo was the scent of underdog cool guys on the prowl, and a lot of babies were made in its sillage. Just sayin'.